Kaiser workers stick with union

Administrative workers, medical technicians and other employees at Kaiser Permanente health facilities around California have voted to retain their current union rather than switch to a rival splinter group, according to election results announced Thursday by the National Labor Relations Board.

The workers voted by a large margin to stick with the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), rebuffing the appeals of the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the California Nurses Association (NUHW-CNA), which had joined forces.

The NLRB reported that 57.8 percent of those who cast ballots voted to stay with the SEIU-UHW, and 40.2 percent voted to switch. (The remaining votes were for neither union or were not counted.) Of the 45,000 Kaiser workers eligible to vote, 32,588 did. Of the eligible union members, 2,500 are in Orange County.

The NUHW-CNA had run a hard campaign against the incumbent union, charging it failed to represent the interests of all its members. The NUHW was founded by former SEIU-UHW members who left the union because of disagreement over tactics.

The NUHW said the SEIU-UHW had struck deals with employers in some states to secure advantages for their members at the expense of members in other regions.

In a statement on its website shortly after the election results were announced, the NUHW said its rival had prevailed through a "campaign of fear, intimidation, and collusion with management." It said the SEIU-UHW allowed Kaiser to slash workers' pension and retiree health benefits and to lay off 1,000 workers statewide, "during a time of record profits."

Dave Regan, president of the SEIU-UHW, told the NUHW to get over it.

"At a time when unionization is down to 7 percent in the private sector, it's time for people like the leaders of NUHW and CNA, who call themselves 'progressives,' to focus on organizing non-union workers instead of attacking people who already are in a union and have the best contract in the country," Regan said.

The election was a repeat of a previous ballot held in the fall of 2010, which was won by SEIU-UHW but was overturned after a judge found that "certain election-related conduct" by that union "warranted a new election," the NLRB said.